Hortus had greatly expanded compared to its initial form. With the merger of all planets, moons and planetoids, the landmass expanded thousands of times.
The quality and density of aura had far exceed any other time in history of humanity. According to Oob, even the devas didn't enjoy this luxury.
In fact, all kingdoms and duchies, for that matter even provinces would find specific spots where the aura flowing out from the inner space was high.
It's like someone was taking up aura and spraying it outside. Instead of getting the dispersed, foggy aura, the goal was to capture the aura just right before it's sprayed.
Hortus, for reasons no one understood, was positioning itself at these specific space-time spots and pumping itself with aura.
This had the effect of improving everyone's talent, accelerating their progression and pushing them over many bottlenecks.
Varian spent 6 months in Paradise.
After merging solar system, he adjusted the timeflow of Hortus to 1:20 for non-celestials and 1:10 for Celestials under rank 7. For those rank 7 and above, it's a normal timeflow.
Typically, it should've been only 1:10 for all. But Varian split the places and created different timezones to make this possible.
Now, what would happen if a celestial ranker get into the zone of non-celestials?
Would he experience the usual timeflow or that of non-celestials? How would it look like? Would they look normal or twice as slow?
It'd be normal. But every second a celestial remained here, it would put a strain on Hortus to maintain that timeflow.
Eventually, the 1:20 timeflow would come down to 1:10. The people inside wouldn't be able to tell any difference, however.
To prevent this situation, celestials avoid entering the zone. And when they do, they either seal themselves or don't use their powers at all, avoiding anys train on Hortus.
For mortals, the six month absence of Varian was translated into 15 full years of leave! Even for celestials, the Emperor just vanished for 7.5 years.
Great changes had taken place in this timeperiod. Nothing was spared from these changes.
The most raw of these changes were the infrastructure. The visible, tangible things.
Instead of growing more and more futuristic with automated technologies, the world had turned more natural.
There were far fewer robots than before. The people-to-people interaction had drastically gone up.
Perhaps it's because this was humanity's first post-war populace.
There was a significant deficit of males due to war casualties. The single mothers naturally found it difficult to raise the kid and give the child their full time.
Even though it could subsidize and pay for the mothers to stay at home for a decade or two, the Imperial Secretary argued against it.
Alison's speech that day, "Our Children", had become the greatest speech of the two decades.
She promised them that single mothers would be given benevolent working conditions and the state would also help in raising the child.
The state banded groups of children together and gave the responsibility to retired veterans who had lost their families.
The children who lost their fathers were given a grandfather.
Even though every veteran was different, some traits seemed to be more common than others.
That's why the children all reported that these grandfathers were grumpy, strict and old school. Yet, they instilled in the kids the discipline necessary to endure hardship.
For all their complains, the children outperformed the normal child by a signfiicant margin, be it academics or sports or art.
Of course, the children would always complain about the nagging grandpas who couldn't stop repeating the same stuff.
It's been fifteen years since the end of war and the generation born after the death of Abyss Emperor was already reaching the end of high school.
They never saw an abyssal in real life. They didn't know what it was living like under the state of an unending war.
And that's why, they often felt the words of their mothers and the military grandpa were great exaggerations.
There were realistic videos, stories, reports of the period. But they found it difficult to relate to.
Because by the time they reached even four or five years, they already knew that were plenty of celestial rankers in the Empire.
Sovereigns weren't even seen as the heads of large cities, much less planet-sized territory.
The new generation simply couldn't understand the era their predecessors lived in.
That was also the case for 'Super Cool Boys & Girls of Nashwelle!'
Today was the last official meeting for the group. There won't be any 30 minute group sessions anymore.
They gathered in the quiet park of the neighborhood for the last time.
"Is the old man going to talk about the Thunder Abyss' army again?" The active boy of the group jumped onto large metal pipes and sat in a graceful motion.
"Or that time when his team had to face off batallion of abyssals to buy time?" The gloomy girl clicked her tongue and jumped onto the tree branch effortlessly.
"Nah, he'll praise the Emperor once again." The cynical boy replied from his flying mat.
The group of five paused at those words before nodding furiously. All of them were physically fit, looked decent and disciplined.
"Right? What is so great about the Emperor anyway? If not him, someone else would've done it."
"Brooo! It's just a big conspiracy! I'm telling you folks! According to an insider I found on the darknet, we already had celestial rankers before the abyss emperor came.
How can we not? It makes no sense that we jumped from no celestials to so many celestials in 15 years.
This Emperor is just a puppet used by the secret celestial powerhouses! It's a cartel, bro! They're running the Empire and are fooling us all!"
The conspiracy bro entered last and started his speech again.
They looked at him with a pitiful gaze and he looked back at them like they're idiots who wouldn't realize the truth even if it's placed in front of them.
While they did think that the Emperor was genuine, they coludn't understand why he commanded so much respect and influence.
Even today, fifteen years after his disappearance, the Emperor remained as revered as ever. If anything, the positive feelings of the older generation who lived through the war, toward the Emperor only increased with time.
"What did he even do? Is he a god or what? He was like 18 or 19 at that time. Only 4 years older than us. It makes no sense, does it?" The curious girl of the group, looked up from the book she was reading and shrugged.
"Brooo~ I'm telling you, his actual age is over 200! Didn't we have Old Earth history? Whenever an Emperor came to power, he'd write all sorts of ridiculous myths about himself! He's the same!"
"They say we have to be thankful that we're born in this peaceful era. Baah! Did they see how much we have to study everyday?" The active boy punched the large pipe.
"Abyss war this, abyss war that! Give me a break! I know it's important for them but it's long over! Been 15 years already! Why do I have to learn about so many battles and wars? I just want to design some new buildings!"
The gloomy girl's rant was met with approval.
"I mean, we all respect the soldiers and their sacrifices but the amount of exaggeration is a bit too much." The cynical boy sighed. "It's like any other war in the history of humani—oops, the old man is here!"
In a blink, they jumped into a straightline and stood with a strict posture. The old veteran walked in his military fatigues like always but there's another…young fellow next to him?
"T-This is…" The old man pointed to the young man and stuttered. His usually steady finger was trembling and his eyes were shaking.
His behavior confused the students. Was the old man really emotional about this being the last day? No, the old man was too steady for this.
"He is the Emp—"
"Earth Academy's second 2nd cadet." The young man said with a smile. "Mr.Hoffman said you all wanted to join Earth Academy. I was given a task to collect feedback for this program. Of course, if you need any advice for the academy or divine paths or battle, I will share my 2 cents."
